Wednesday, 27 June 2007

As we settle in to our new house, many tiny little things remind me that we don't live in the UK anymore. Little things, like going to Borders instead of WHSmith and Wal-Mart instead of ASDA. Seeing a Fed-Ex van. American flags on the flagpoles instead of British flags. I have been mostly in a state of apathy about our move, but sometimes I miss good old Scotland. Our new house is great, very spacious, but I miss all my Scottish Friends.

It's Wednesday and we have internet access! The cable modem was installed earlier today. I've set up the wireless router so Alex can surf while I do this. I'm proud of myself because I bought a new wireless-G router at Best Buy while I was there getting something else and I got it up and running all on my own. I'm not usually the hardware person around here so that's an accomplishment.

Now I'm sitting in the glide rocker in the master bedroom to test that I still have signal. I do, but I'm not very far away from it so that's not surprising. The house is pretty open so I'm guessing that we'll have good access upstairs, too. I'm going to give that a try.

Yes, in the upstairs TV room\homeschool area I have good signal. The kids won't have computers in their rooms, so I don't need to check on that. Ok, I'm sure you're bored with all this now so I'll stop, but not with the blog entry.

Yesterday Kayleigh had her 2nd birthday. An aunt and uncle were in attendance for our family party and it was fun. She enjoyed her presents and the cake and ice cream. Shortly after we moved to Scotland, Aidan had his 4th birthday and I remember making a small cake for him in our temporary housing in Aberdeen.

Bug is sitting on the bar stool next to me listening to the Learning Piano she got from the aforementioned aunt and uncle play "If You're Happy and You Know It" and she's clapping her hands along with it. Alex thinks he's going to go mad. I think he'll survive.

Monday, 25 June 2007

Sorry for the extended time since the last posting! We've been a little busy. We took possession of the house on Sunday and we've been buying various things to make it livable until our furniture catches up with us. I've also had to be sure all our utilities would stay on and just transfer to our name- or actually my name since I wanted to allow Tartan to focus on things at work. Today, our air shipment and our items from storage all got delivered so I'll be unpacking things tomorrow.

The oddest thing happened this evening. We're in the Residence Inn until the end of the week because it's less expensive to pay for a month than a little over 3 weeks, so we came back this evening to have internet access and to eat (free) dinner. Who do we run into at dinner, but the owner of our house in Scotland! Tartan hadn't ever actually met him in person so it was a first meeting for them. He doesn't actually usually stay at this Residence Inn, but the other one in The Woodlands. Very funny.

I need to pack up some more so we can head back home. We have internet access at the house as of Wednesday, so I'll try to blog then!

Sunday, 17 June 2007

We got to visit my dad (Grandpa) and Nelda (Grandma) this past week for a couple of days. It's a five hour drive but not a very difficult one. The kids traveled well though Abigail got a little impatient for the last couple of hours- "are we almost there?" "how much longer??". Tartan stayed in Houston and worked long hours.

We visited the Texas State Aquarium and spent an enjoyable several hours there. Alex enjoyed teaching Kayleigh new words and flipping over the hermit crabs so they had to pop out of their shells and right them again. Kyrie liked the dolphin show and has decided she wants to become a dolphin trainer. Aidan liked the dolphins and touching the rays and sharks in the touch pool. Abigail liked everything: the otters, the jellyfish, the hermit crabs, the seahorses, and the dolphins to name a few.

A week from today we can open the front door to our house and it'll really be our house. We are looking forward to that.

Monday, 11 June 2007

Finally, we have two laptops in the apartment! Mom went computer shopping at Best Buy and now we have a shiny new silver and black laptop computer. Now, Mom has no excuse for withholding computer access! The only downside with the new laptop is a tiny Shift key - really bad for a typist that loves capital letters. Now that Mom lets me use the old laptop, I've been taking advantage of the Internet access, looking up Wikipedia and Doctor Who.Speaking of Doctor Who, we really miss that show. Though our loss has been softened with Internet access to the Doctor Who website and the Series two boxed set, we really miss being able to finish the third season, eagerly awaiting episodes such as TheFamilyofBlood and Blink. To alleviate this loss, we have been watching Series two of Doctor Who every night.This nightly viewing is all the excitement we get, other than reading and watching endless cartoons. I am desperately waiting for the day we leave the hotel and move into our new house. Of course, soon after I'm going to be at summer camp for a week...

13 more days before we can take possession of the house. That seems like a loooong time from now. Even with the kids spending the morning at VBS last week, they still spent a large amount of time watching cartoons. I can almost see their brains turning to mush. Kayleigh is trying to say "Spongebob Squarepants".

If everyone stays healthy (yes, we've continued to have stomach bug issues), I'm hoping to go to Corpus Christi for a few days to visit my Dad later this week. Tartan is going to get me a Tomtom Navigator for lower stress driving. I am seriously compass-challenged and I'm always afraid I'm going to miss an exit or turn.

Trusting in the Lord (and praying no one else gets sick),Naomi for the Colliers

Friday, 8 June 2007

I never thought I'd miss roundabouts. There's a 4-way stop close to the hotel and the other day my mind drifted and I suddenly realised I didn't know where I was in the sequence. I had to guess and fortunately no one honked at me.

I miss Tesco delivery. I knew I would. I've gone grocery shopping a couple of times with the kids and though aisles are wide and the kids are pretty well behaved- we take up so much room and inevitably get in people's way.

I miss being known at the library. In comparison, the library here is huge, and Alex and Kyrie in particular will enjoy the larger selection, but it feels impersonal. There's so many people who go through it everyday that we just blend in with everyone else.

Tuesday, 5 June 2007

We attended Creekside Bible church on Sunday. They meet in the community center near where our house is (though it won't really be our house until 24 June). In the fall they'll meet in a nearby elementary (primary) school- something we're very familiar with. Interestingly, a few months ago after we knew we were going to move, Kyrie said she would miss going to a school for church. She said she liked it better than a dedicated church building. Strange, but true.

It's a small church, which makes it easier to meet the people in it, get to know them and have fellowship. It's smaller than BCFC, or so it seemed to me. Since they only have a facility on Sundays they're doing vacation Bible school (holiday Bible club) each Sunday over the next several weeks. They started just this past Sunday so the three middle kids are not having to join in late.

It felt a little strange walking into a different place for worship on Sunday. There were a few faces that were familiar from when we went to Faith Bible church 4 years ago. No one I knew well, but I suppose that will change. They also had a picnic in a nearby park after the service to celebrate several families formally joining the church, so we had a chance to start getting to know people.

Friday, 1 June 2007

It's the 1st of June and it's going to be a while before life feels settled.

First of all, thanks to all of you who prayed for us and our trip. It went very well and all our luggage arrived with us intact! Air France sent a special shuttle bus for us and another passenger so we would be able to catch the flight from Paris to Houston. Never had an airline do something like that before, so I was impressed.

On Thursday, we got new SIM cards and a cell phone plan and bought two cars. I am now driving a Toyota Sequoia and Tartan is driving a Hyundai Sonata. On the downside, as we were sitting waiting for a table for dinner, Kayleigh got sick (we quickly departed). I also had to get up a couple of times last night with her. I thought she was fine this morning, but we had an incident in the hotel lobby. She's been fine since, so in about an hour we're going to go see our house. We're praying that this stays isolated, but in the confines of a hotel suite, that's not likely.